Our hero Jyn Erso is caught trying to steal a rebel fighter and is taken into custody. When her background is revealed she’s given the choice of going on a mission to the planet to see what kind of weapons are being tested or being turned over to bounty hunters to be turned into the Empire for the substantial price on her head.

Saw Gerrera

Along with his sister, Steela, he fought alongside Darth Vader — back when the Sith lord was just an impetuous young Jedi named Anakin Skywalker. In the episode A War on Two Fronts, which aired in October 2012, Saw and Steela were part of an insurgent group being unofficially trained by Anakin, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and the padawan Ahsoka Tano.

As always, the excellent folks at MakingStarWars got good set intel… the production crew nicknamed him “Castro” probably in reference to Che Gueverra, from where “Saw Gerrera” may have come from

Why is his appearance different? Our guess is the trailer was a flashback, when a young rebellious Jyn may have bumped into him (If you keep fighting, what will you become?) Later on we see the older, slightly unhinged Gerrera… who’s fighting his own war independent of the Rebellion.

Director Orson Krennic

On the opposing side, this villain is an ambitious Imperial apparatchik who intends to use his squad of Deathtroopers to pulverize the Rebel uprising and ascend into the Emperor’s graces – while hopefully avoiding the wrath of his enforcer, Darth Vader.

The Rogue One Visual Story guide leak was right… the only thing it lacked was Krennic’s first name. At this point however, it’s still not clear exactly what he is Director of. The title is commonly used for government institutions (like the FBI and CIA), and not the military.

It also quashes any EU wishes of him being an analogue of Grand Admiral Thrawn, though he may have the same tactical brilliance.

Galen Erso

Jyn’s estranged father is like the galactic version of nuclear pioneer J. Robert Oppenheimer, with doomsday knowledge that is sought by both the Empire and the Rebellion. “He’s one of those people that has insight into you know specific aspects of just how the universe works,” says Hart. Where has Galen been, if Jyn has been on her own for years? “The circumstances of how the family got to the state that it’s in is something that we probably don’t want to share right now,”

Doomsday knowledge is clearly a reference to the Death Star. This reinforces the rumors that Mad Mikkelsen is a weapons designer who refined the original Geonosian blueprint and made the Death Star possible.

It’s also funny how Mikkelsen outed his character when he signed that “Galen” autograph way back in September 2015.

Out of all the major characters revealed in EW, only Galen didn’t have a photo. It’s possible his appearance may be disheveled and deranged after many years in Imperial custody. He could also be the hooded figure in the trailer.

Chirrut and Baze

Not to be cynical assholes, but our two Asian characters don’t just represent galactic diversity — they’re a shrewd move on Disney’s part to make the Star Wars brand a cultural phenomenon in China, where it’s much less known compared to the rest of the world.

Update: 24 hours after the promised deadline for proof elapsed, the Reddit thread was marked “Debunked”. See update at the end.

A few hours ago, a Redditor calling himself KeepR1Dark claimed to be involved in making Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. If you can’t tell from the username, he seems to have an axe to grind with the reshoots and the new direction the movie is going.

Interestingly, KeepR1Dark has offered to prove his credentials to the Reddit moderators. While we await their verdict, let’s hear the juicy (possible) intel that KRD has to offer.

As always, these leaks are not 100% confirmed. Read at your own risk!

The plot

The Rebel Alliance has caught wind of a weapons test on a planet in the outer rim. Our hero Jyn Erso is caught trying to steal a rebel fighter and is taken into custody. When her background is revealed she’s given the choice of going on a mission to the planet to see what kind of weapons are being tested or being turned over to bounty hunters to be turned into the Empire for the substantial price on her head.

Unbeknownst to the other characters Jyn has received a transmission from a man claiming to be her father and telling her that the fate of the entire galaxy rests on whether or not she can find him.

The Rebels go on their mission and discover the Empire testing Imperial walkers and order an attack on the prototypes, but the Walkers are fully operational and now down the Rebel attack squad. Jyn escapes during the battle and resumes the search for her father and his mysterious warning.

The Death Star

… the Rebels are totally unaware of the Death Star’s existence. The weapons test they are concerned with is for Imperial Walkers. They only discover the Death Star because Jyn goes rogue and is determined to find her father.

Mad Mikkelsen’s character

Jyn Erso’s father is alive but as a designer of the Death Star is on death row so as not to spill it’s secrets.

He’s had a change of heart at some point and has left the Death Star with a very small vulnerability, but a vulnerability nonetheless. He’s contacted his daughter to come and get the details of the vulnerability from him into the hands of the Rebel Alliance and chose his daughter specifically so he can apologize before his death for being an absentee father.

About Jyn

She remains loyal only to the idea of finding her father. She doesn’t care about the battle between the Empire and the Rebellion, she just wants to find her father. It is that love which uncovers the Death Star. The Rebellion would have been screwed if Jyn didn’t go rogue.

About the bacta tank scene

KRD claims it’s NOT a bacta tank, but a power core:

It’s not a tank. It’s a power core (for) the Death Star. The man kneeling in front of it is Jyn’s father having a “What have I done?” moment. The scene we are talking about is right before his arrest.

More on the aliens and the robot:

One is comic relief, one’s a serious ass kicker, and one is killed off much sooner than you’ll be expecting.

Do we see Vader?

Ohhhh yeah. In a night scene Vader absolutely lays waste to a Rebel ground Squad. Unfortunately this is one of the scenes we have to water down. We made it like something from the old slasher/horror films. Rebel soldiers who joked about a boogie man with magical powers and then minutes later are absolutely wasted.

Other OT characters

Just Vader and Leia and Tarkin and Mothma.

Cameos

Yes there’s a huge A lister who has one line but I don’t want to spoil it because we’re keeping that and it’s such an awesome “what the hell” moment.

Battle scenes

One big ground battle, 4 skirmishes, no space battles but there is a space pursuit of sorts.

On the original ending:

What we’ve created is not so far from the inspiration of the original films in that we styled it after WWII combat. The difference is that the original trilogy only used that inspiration for air fights. We invoke that same feeling in infantry scenes. There’s a beachhead scene that’s very much derivative of Saving Private Ryan, but in the Star Wars universe. Imagine the Stormtroopers are Rebel soldiers and as soon as those ramps come down and they run off the transports they’re mowed down by enemy fire. That’s what we’ve made here.

I’ll put it this way: a lot of characters die in this movie right now, and that was supposed to be the whole point. You don’t name an entire squadron after a group that got a happy ending, no that’s normally in honor of a great sacrifice.

The ending will stay the same, but the crew’s fate will be implied, not shown. The reshoot a will be for our Normandy inspired beachhead scene and the Vader massacre, as well as a few other combat scenes.

(Disney) wants a movie that kids can watch too because that will net the most money. (Director) Gareth is livid.

What happens in the last 10 minutes?

MAJOR MAJOR SPOILERS: Jyn Erso and crew beaming the plans aboard the Tantive IV before their ship is destroyed by an Imperial caravan.

The Alliance gets knocked around the whole film until the end. Remember when ANH starts the Rebels had just scored their first victory. (The sole victory is) literally at the very end of the movie.

Yesterday, Disney announced the Rogue One leak was “unauthorized and filled with incorrect information.” While we wonder what kind of leaks are actually “authorized”, our Rebel spies worked around the clock to find the “incorrect information” in the leak.

Today, we found one of the incorrect info Easter eggs: the name of that security droid is NOT K-250.

Let’s examine the leak again:

The droid spread is pretty straightforward, right? The big bold letters announce his name as K-250. This is why the entire Internet, from major sites like Wikipedia, IMDB, Yahoo News, to dedicated fan sites like Making Star Wars, Wookieepedia, Slashfilm, and Screenrant, are all calling him K-250 (K-two fifty).

However, look closer — his name is actually K-2SO (K-two ess oh).

But which is which, K-250 or K-2SO? We believe it’s the latter, K-two ess oh.

When it comes to accuracy, the text content of the leak isn’t trustworthy. Content is repeated for the villains page, and even copy-pasted from the Star Wars databank for the AT-AT page. This is because they are merely filler text, used to plot the layout.

Keeping that in mind, take a closer look at the title — it actually contradicts itself. The header says “K-two five ZERO” (number). Then the smaller header below it says “K-two five OH” (letter). It might be because it’s filler text hastily typed in. On the other hand, that diagram took a lot of time and couldn’t be the result of an accident.

Schematic-wise, the “S” in K-2SO couldn’t be a stylized version of “five”. If you notice, it looks exactly the same as the letter S in “Classified” just above it.

The big K-2SO also couldn’t be a stylized “five”. Notice how the number 2 has a straight edge. If the letter S was intended to be number 5, it should have a straight edge as well. And again, this was thoughtfully drawn out, not hastily typed in like the filler title.

K-2SO follows Star War’s naming tradition of letter-number-letter-letter. Take a look at C-3PO. He belongs to the 3PO series of protocol droids. Guess what rhymes with him? K-2SO. A 2SO series not only follows the naming convention, perhaps K-2S0 was also built by the same company that made Threepio’s family of droids (Cybot Galactica).

In addition, one of the Rebellion’s protocol droids in Hoth during The Empire Strikes Back was named K-3PO. So the choice of K-2SO may be a nice throwback by the Rogue One team.

Han Solo used to call him “that big white rod”.

If you search Google for K-2SO, only our site calls him as such. Everyone else thinks it’s K-250. You heard it here first!

So the next time you see another site proclaiming K-250, tell them K-2SO is an enforcer droid, not a Keurig coffee maker.